Are the wheels supposed to be pointing this direction?

Nite of Fire Down Under

Words and photos by Jon Van Daal

Graeme Cowin made a lot of promises for the “Aeroflow Nite Of Fire” event at Sydney Dragway in his November InnerView in DRO. Well, he succeeded in pulling it off – in fact our Antipodes correspondent, Jon Van Daal, reckons it was the best event he went to all year as he explains.

Last year, the “Aeroflow Nite Of Fire” event was rained out and was held the following day. For most of this year nearly every major race at this track has had the threat of rain or was rain affected so it was a fantastic sight to see the sun had his hat on when that day dawned. The biggest field of Outlaw Nitro fuel funny cars ever seen in Australia greeted the starter with seventeen fuel coupes on the property. Add two wheelstanders, two burnout cars, stunt bikes, a bunch of pyrotechnics and one crazy Russian A-37B Dragon Fly ground attack jet fighter and you had a winning formula.

Tommy Johnson Jr. (near lane) in the “L.A. Hooker” Plymouth Arrow took on Nathan Peirano in the “Time Traveller” Chevy Vega. Prior to the final TJ said to Graeme Cowin “We’ll need to run a little faster if we are going to win this thing” and Cowin obliged. There TJ took the lead off the line by a hundredth and turned that into a win with his best run of the night, a 5.794/249.86 to a second best 6.501/208.81 for Peirano.